Narendra Modi: Closest representation of State’s Inception

If I were to describe Narendra Modi and his fan following, perhaps I should say Lord and his men because that’s what Narendra means (nar-man, Indra- God or lord), I put it this way—Debauch aspiring Ascetic to lead them, fantasizing excess in near future, fascinated by Asceticism but aspiring Debauchery. In short: Asceticism as a means to Debauchery. Here lies the paradox—a practitioner of self-denial, asceticism, Mr. Modi is working day and night so that our aspiring young ones, whom he praises so much that they may also reciprocate naively, can fulfill their dream of excess. His fans are everywhere, on social networking sites, newspapers, among Bollywood actors and corporates apart from usual fundamental ideological base that he is part of and represents. There are chants of growth wherever you go. The saint must work ceaselessly for our surplus, so that we can “dream big”. And this is it! Nationalism, superpower, growth and this is it. Well, I never feel associated with such injected terms: Terms which I think come into common discourse through state or aspiring state. Vocabulary must be taught to us before we can even think of analyzing. You see, with these terms, whether or not they are true on ground level, an atmosphere for discussion prevails. In this arena all arguments must be either for or against the proposed vocabulary and its sophisticated structure. For example, every discussion, and subsequently an argument concerning growth of Gujarat, demands it to be either in support or against. This vocabulary of growth and superpower infused into the mainstream ensures that opinion, if any exists, must either be praising the proposed idea or denying it. So a BJP fan must always support the “growth” and a Congress fan must deny it. What is lost then? The loss is we do not know what it means to grow. What it means to be a superpower! It is out of question—the need to debate what is actually growth. Cancer also grows! Now we must imitate some blur image assigned to these terms and that too, obsessively. The time for theory has ended. We must immediately stop debating and act as if we have taken all our time to define, everything is concrete and clear; the point remains of implementing it. This is most dangerous belief. Recently I watched a movie—“Django Unchained”. There is a scene in the movie where Leonardo DiCaprio( Calvin Candy) mocks one of his black slaves for not knowing the meaning of “reimburse”. Actually, Candy paid five hundred dollars for that slave and expected him to fight at least five “mandingo” fights failing which the slave must reimburse the master. I liked that scene not because I found it amusing but because it contains much deeper meaning. The idea being—the slave must know the meaning of reimburse and subsequently that he is morally expected to reimburse no matter how much violent and degrading act, that is slavery, brought him in a position to reimburse. The master must teach the vocabulary.

Elite Squad: The Enemy Within, a Brazilian film directed, produced by Jose Padilha, starring Wagner Moura, is a semi-fictional account of BOPE. I am not concerned with the overall story or theme. I am interested mainly in the character of Sandro Rocha who is a lead corrupt boss of Rio militia. Since he is powerful and corrupt, he is seen as someone getting his share from drug dealer—a sort of tax you can say. He and his gang later kill the dealers, the middle-men, and start operating directly. He now acquires a bigger role providing internet, cable TV, banks, cafes, restaurants, every business and acts as a protector to the slums. How will a guy living in that slum treat Rocha? I think we deal here with a central and important problem. Although Rocha does not form an official state here, through him we can see how state actually operates. A guy living in that slum sees his relationship with Rocha and his gang as of mutual benefit, protector. He sees the relationship as that of specific roles defined in society. You know what I mean to say.

‘Rocha looks after our basic necessities. He takes care of our wants. Rocha provides security. We must pay our taxes and all that.’

Rocha and his gang is state here.  If we somehow disappear from our own times and place ourselves when our civilization is just beginning to take shape, Rocha represents the dynamics of state. Let us give our Rocha some bigger hurdles to tackle, say employment generation. Rocha owns all lands and resources by default and he generates employment. Now give Rocha a little bit of global touch of growth. He now is a Messiah who intends to achieve a fantasy of surplus for everyone—‘there shall be no poor, we will be a superpower.’ It does not matter why there is a poor. What matters is we must act hastily. Poverty should vanish from earth as soon as possible. Again the mantra: theory is wasting time, acting is everything. As the time passes by,—sufficient generations after Rocha—we have a totally new set of ideological points governing Rocha’s posterity.

‘All problems are there because we do not follow the fundamentals set by state. Or each problem exists because State doesn't have sufficient funds. We should tax the rich and all that.’ State’s emphasis is to present and formulate every bit of problem as a function of funds, which will be solvable if we have enough funds—obviously that day of sufficiency never arrives. Nevertheless, subjects of the State have become habitual of encountering the problem as properly defined; the point is of for or against as I previously pointed. Rocha is not the only one. You can see a reflection of state wherever a sub-state or to be politically correct, a sub-governance begins to germinate. Some street side vendor or one with a barrow often pays a part of his money as extortion for selling in a particular area. In India, where the official State is not vigilant enough, this is often the case. Now that is not the official state tax but they pay it. Why? Because of sheer threat of violence or violence itself! This is governance or state in its crude form which after sufficient time acquires the status of what we call—social contract.

I told this long story—out of context it may seem but it is not. I think Narendra Modi is closest representation of State’s inception that we can get in our own times. You must know, it is a necessity for Rocha to evolve.      

Lovely Commercials

My God! These commercials! I love them especially those tobacco commercials. If you have ever noticed, they start with something ethereal about tobacco, something that transcends, something that elevates, that make you feel like a king; I don’t know but in a naïve manner I put—to make you feel fearless. To chew tobacco is to be fearless; at the same time it is a source of divine pleasure. This is how the commercial start and this is what they convey until a short warning –indecipherable, incoherent with the overall advertisement, usually spoken too fast to be heard so as not to tamper with the pleasant environment which the actual advertisement creates –appears.  In fact, warnings of all sorts share this feature.

“Chewing tobacco causes cancer.”

“Smoking is injurious to health.”

This is what they say, making their honest and good intentions clear in a clumsy way. While majority of advertisement deals with fearlessness, it ends making us fear for our lives. Two totally different emotions fused in one.  Good for none but a laugh. Optimism and pessimism mixed in one. If not for anything else, it is good to tell ourselves how pathetic our condition is. I mean we tell a lie and then a truth and this is not the important thing. What is important is we are forced to do it. Forced not to tell lie only; forced not to tell truth only; if it had been any one of lie or truth, the condition is much better. But we are forced to tell both at the same time. I think this is horrendous. I feel this whole thing like Obscene is sold, at the same time the seller urges you not to buy the Obscene because it’s obscene. What a humanly gesture!

There is another commercial which fascinates me. When I say fascinates me, it genuinely means fascinates me. Please allow me to present to you—‘killer jeans’. Let us be murderously correct –not just ‘killer jeans’ but ‘killer water saver jeans’. That’s what their product is about. At least they say it so. Killer and saver, both at the same time! Killer jeans that saves water! To be politically and environmentally correct, they even put a protesting audience—some sort of young bare chest students caring for our environment and all that—against police with water cannons. You see, these advertisements are fabulous. They do not disappoint anyone. There is something for everyone to feel associated with the product in some sort of transcendental way. Now we have an easy solution for water shortage. Wear killer-saver jeans and be environmentally correct, in other words be environmentally guilt free, be on the right side of the history. Even an atheist, who considers himself free from guilt, can’t resist it. He too wants to be on the right side—redeemed environmentally. Christianity, Islam and whatever religion you take, I think the principles of guilt are best implemented by the advertising world, even better than those religions themselves. Water shortage started because we didn't wear the ‘killer-saver jeans’ at the right time in our long history. To correct our mistake we must instantly indulge in this endeavour obsessively. Who knows, maybe we could measure the precise amount of water we save by buying killer jeans. ‘Oh! You have only three jeans, I have ten of those. I save ten litres of water.’ Now, simple mathematics can even predict how much water people around the world save. Those poor devils who could not afford these jeans are even wasting water, undoubtedly even causing the water shortage in the first place. Imagine an extreme situation—there is shortage in arid regions of Africa and we have our benevolent Western nations sending over hundred thousand ‘killer water saver jeans’ as an aid. Killer jeans dropped from airplanes not to kill as the name suggests, but to save.

The last commercial which has not escaped my memory and still deserves a laugh whenever I watch it is the one about the milk supplements.  Alexander, Akbar and Jhansi ki Rani didn't like the taste of milk; we need milk supplements in various flavours to make our kid drink it. But that is not the point of laughter. One advertisement in the same line of milk supplements, of Bournvita if I remember correctly, claims that to absorb the calcium in milk by human body we need its supplement to be mixed along with milk. Mother who gives Bournvita to her child is knowledgeable while who don’t is ignorant of the obvious, self-evident fact. Nevertheless the point such advertisements make is that man has been drinking plain milk from thousands of years only in vain, technically as good as water, deficient of any extra benefits. I don’t take it as an insult to our ancestors but actually a groundbreaking research of our technologically advanced and intelligent folks, who obviously have strongest of bones than most of our bravest fighters of history.  

Goodbye Blue Sky

“Goodbye Blue Sky” is definitely not the song by Pink Floyd. It is a short story by Nour Sharif though its subliminal theme is almost the same—as I see it—as that of the song. The full story, for the simple pleasure of reading, can be accessed here. 

“Goodbye Blue Sky” is a fictional account with a tinge of reality in the form of Lebanon civil war which afflicted Lebanon for more than 15 years. Most of the story is set in “a little town, far from the coast, and close to the mountains” named Zahleh and a very insignificant part in Canada—the specific town or place is not mentioned. I consider it obligatory not to reveal the specifics of the plot as that would unnecessarily smother the zeal of the reader. “Goodbye Blue Sky” is a bid adieu to peace inviting clouds of war, a goodbye to the warmth of clear sky for Gabriel, Zaynab and Michael—central characters in the story. It is a story of contrast where we are at one hand appalled by the civil war involving Muslims and Christians and on the other fascinated by the brief intimacy of Zaynab ( a Muslim) and Gabriel( a Christian). But ultimately they too have to say goodbye to their blue sky. The writer also drew a contrast between the turbulent land of Lebanon which is marred by religious violence and peaceful Canada where at some point in the story Gabriel and his father Michael migrate to reclaim their blue sky. The story brings to the fore, in the midst of peace and war, the humanly relations, though strained, between a father and a son, a husband and a wife, a boy and a girl—vacillating, sometimes due to external pressures and sometimes due to internal conflicts.

I have always felt that aesthetic sense of English Literature is mainly due to the ability of the writer and his/her sense for circumlocution. And I can say without a doubt that in this endeavour the writer wonderfully describes the situations to fulfill the aesthetic demand that every story should have. Vividness in description is clearly visible. At times I felt that the story is too short to accommodate the full web of emotions that it seems to conquer. But then I remember that the writer must have been bound to the limitations of the competition that she was taking part in. By the way if I haven’t mentioned till now, make note of it immediately. She, that is Nour Sharif, has won third prize for this story in Malik’s Short Story Competition 2012.

There is nothing that can stop me from revealing more about the story and its theme but that would be doing injustice to the writer. In a way, injustice to the reader too! What purpose the story serve to the reader if it is already accomplished through the review of the story? I, therefore, cease my hand and give a chance to your complex wiring of eye and brain. In short, I am urging you to read this story in order to enjoy every bit in its entirety.

In the end I would like to thank Nour Sharif, whom I know only by the means of Facebook, for providing me the soft copy of this story and thereby giving me the chance to read, most importantly, free of cost.

Of Guilt, God and Money

Society has witnessed death of God. Of what was held with so much surety until now is under doubt. The dichotomy of good and evil is replaced with a more blur question—‘what is wrong with that?’ The general sort of reasoning, which should be in terms of cause and effect in the event of death of God, is now bluntly placed before us in the form—what is bad in it? And you ask me what is bad in it, I say nothing. You ask me what is good in it, I say nothing. I mean when you start asking that type of questions, not only you are sure to get no reasonable answer, in fact you end any means of rational thinking. A subject of this curious question is money, comfort.

What’s wrong with money! What’s obnoxious about it! As I said anyone concerning his conscience with that question will never, in his life, be able to assert that he is asking himself a timidly bootless question. One, who asks it, will convince himself anyway that there is nothing wrong in it. For a man always convince his conscience to be on the right side even before one commits murder for no purpose at all. It may sound ludicrous yet it is true. A man must have firm conviction of right before one act. A man must do right. So how it is that he starts torturing himself with guilt of having done wrong? The feeling of wrong comes only with external agency—an agency which forces the individual to realize his wrong. A deed is not wrong or right when it is committed but only when it is judged. You see, murder of a human being is heinous in our judicial system and is reproached severely. Subsequently it is a crime, a wrong, abhorring and hence loathed. However killing an animal for meat is not murder. Why? Is it not life? I suggest you read my post titled ‘Origin of…’ where I contemplate on the origins of such type of morality. But for now let’s proceed. It is not loathed—leave a few societies like Jains—and here you see clearly that for a wrong, crime to exist there must be a body forcing repugnance, calling deliberately to us and inducing guilt. For thousands of years this work was done by religions although clumsily. But here I am not bothering myself fighting for animal rights. I like meat, have no intention to ban it legally. What I am trying to convey here is that man has thought and worked only on guilt, conscience and therefore is bound to fail when the “general guilt pattern” changes. If you don’t have a reason to support a purpose, naturally guilt can’t bear the burden for long. There is no external agency now to check the mad rush for money; there is void left in the place of guilt producing factory. And I am glad that there is. We need a reason and not guilt. Why should money not be the sole measure of all things? Why should it not drive all our endeavours? Where is the reason to support it? There is a vacuum.

I regard money acquiring the same place as a few centuries ago was filled with the magnanimous God. In the name of God everything is permitted; in the name of money everything is permitted. And how much reasonable it seems! How much logical!  How backward are those who condemn it! The society we live in always carry a weighing balance. On one scale they have an idea, on the other its monetary equivalent. A few centuries ago the other scale was reserved for God. What we have got to oppose this? Remnants of guilt from religion lying there, decaying with time, sometimes deteriorating with a vigour and giving an illusion of revival though the zeal is the struggle of a flame when someone sprinkles water on it. I have never been fond of such edifices of guilt.

Only man, in the entire realm of living, has got the gift of being raised to speculate future. He speculates and comes to conclusion that possessions, in whatever form, hoarding, in whatever form, is the only means to better future. Is his speculation right? Is his speculation independent from the structures of society? His speculation is right. His speculation is not independent from the structures of society. Here we see a reason itself provided by the society and hence it triumphs. Whatever is strong, wins! Evil is strong and it wins. It is a blatant myth that good always win. Possessions, money, hoarding ultimately decides your treatment in society. The reason is strong and it wins; it survived millenniums after millenniums. Religion tried to counter it with guilt—weak so to say—and is failing. Where is the reason? It is missing! So what can stop that mad rush? Reason itself which nowhere to be found: a void that needs to be filled. 21^st century is devoured by corruption. One direct reason is—more number of people given the opportunity to acquire which was otherwise reserved for few in early days. Intellectuals define corruption to be decaying of morality or deviation from normal or a more popular one is: preferring private gains over public duties. I say: Corruption is responding to reason, sidelining, looking askance at guilt to acquire what is most prized in society—money, power, domination. Reason triumphs, guilt fails. You need a reason against it, not some sort of complex spying structure where each spies on the other. Now there is a class of people that blames everything on human nature. I say greed, they say human nature; I say war, they say human nature; I say money, they say human nature. Hell with human nature! Human nature is blank! Zero!

As I said, with God and money everything is permitted, not in the sense that each has the freedom to do whatever one wishes but anything that can be astutely attributed to be God’s wish, or in the case of money to be yielding profit—no matter how much stupid, no matter how much catastrophic. For example, consider the food we eat today. There is tremendous change in what we eat over the last fifty years than we had over the last thousand years. A preferred, thoroughly tested diet, conforming to our evolutionary buds is changed so suddenly only to conform to the standards of profit. Result is there for you to analyse. The food which is worthless, to the body obviously, is cheapest; the food which is necessary is slowly leaving our meal. To be short, we eat crap because it’s cheap. Thank Money—addressed as God—we don’t eat our own crap because it’s free. What sort of economics or reasoning is that? You can find numerous such examples. Once the “market” approves them, they become reasonable. I have seen the absurdest of ideas thriving just for the sake of money. Comfort made the goal of life! Comfort is against evolution—evolutionary strength to be precise. How pitiful are those ailing, disease ridden creatures that care about the softness of pillow of their hospital bed! Any truth which is against life is no truth at all. And then they ask you to fulfill your thirst for comfort and money through legitimate ways? What is legitimate? Money is same whether it comes from cutting throat of some person, by lurking in a dark corner or by writing software making your back ache as if punished for something.  A noble man will stand up indignantly and lament—“Mr. Backward there is guilt in the first case.” I say—“What guilt? I don’t feel any unless you force it on me.” You feel guilt only because you have a system in place to condemn you, torture you. However, in the second case you don’t have one. A programmer may write a part of a program which is to benefit a guy like Hitler in some way—obviously unknowingly as he (programmer) is so noble—is a professional. Another great creature who writes a part of a program which helps marketing a product online that has resulted in millions of diseases, deaths and skewed lifestyle is a more revered professional. Professionalism! OMM! Oh my Money! As I told you, for guilt there must be an external agency. Without it there is no bad. Bad or evil—that is presently not classified as evil—grows in the direction where it finds no lingering guilt. Guilt is useless in that purpose because it can never effect the inception. It is reactionary—finding its way once the problem is thousand paces ahead. What should I say of how money has stupefied all senses? What terrible storm it unleashed on human relations? In what horrendous way it has streamlined the goal of all humanity! Oh! When I hear chants of growth, I nauseate. I need fresh air: a place that does not stink. A paroxysm of rage, feeling of disgust seizes those proponents of growth if you question a single letter of growth. We are backward, uncivilized holding up their growth. They sweep, with a single sway of their hand, anonymous populations, enormous vegetations and all that is natural—that is backward—to spur their “Growth Horse”. Profit and money being their God!

Once you make money the measure of all things, there is no way you can use guilt to stop a rush for it. Guilt, conscience hinders everything new, even good ones. Once you cross that threshold, guilt vanishes like it never was; only reason lasts.                   

The Art of Hitchhiking

Until a few minutes ago, it was the infinite stretch of road that ruminatively attracted the gaze of a seeker. The subject of that earnest look is now a moving object. With the most innocent of intentions and in expectation of something filled with rapture, he extends his arm most gently. However, the one who is sought so dearly seems to be on his way of attending a matter of national concern. For him, therefore, everything else is trivial. In a moment he passes his seeker like a flash. And now the “road” is there again to be looked at, ruminatively—

Hitchhiking

It is often the scene in the business of hitchhiking—especially when a naïve is at work. However, for a veteran, who is most careful in the manner of his approach, this exercise is often fruitful. I have experienced it with tremendous rate of success for two consecutive years. Each day it was normal to work it four to five times, covering about 13-14 kilometers, in different parts of the city and at varied times of the day. Naturally such an exposure gives great insight. Here, for the sake of change and withdrawing from the nature of topics I have been recently dealing with, I will share a few tricks of the trade which I feel helped me to make my wallet weigh a little heavier.

Before I begin I must make sure you are aware that these tricks have their space domain in India and on the great Indian roads—it may or may not work on others depending on the psychology of its natives. Here we start! The most important of all traits that must not abandon a hitchhiker: a will not to be embarrassed. The more stringently you are cornered, embarrassed, looked down at, the stronger your will should become. The seeds of successful hitchhiker germinate only in those who could stand all day long despite being unlucky, although that rarely occurs, only to be observed if a meteorite falls on whosoever stops driving for a moment.

Next on our rulebook is what vehicle to avoid. Bicycle is cornered without consideration unless the situation is so grave that you will die if not carried by someone. Scooters too are better, if avoided, the reason being scooter drivers are hypochondriac on behalf of their means of transport. It bothers them constantly—the chronic ailment of their conveyance—and one more pedestrian, an aspiring copilot, would only add to woes, may even serve as the cause of death for the ailing creature. That’s what they think when they turn their heads in order to avoid the pleader. Girls and women should also be avoided in India because they give you such a stare as if you are not from Earth, not Mars, not even Venus but from Pluto and instead of being helped by them you are there to escort them to Pluto. We have done enough about what to avoid. Now what place to choose? Select an area where vehicles naturally slow down just like around speed breakers. Slowing provides more time for thoughts to settle down—obviously of the driver’s. If there is nothing to curb down the speed then be sure to signal your intent from a long distance for you must provide your to-be benefactor a good time to judge. Otherwise before he sees you well, he will be past you. Rarely anyone stops after one has gone past the threshold. Make sure that you don’t present your side view or your back to the driver. Instead, you should not be unwilling to face directly opposite, signaling with your left thumb and keeping free your right hand. This way the driver can get a good and comprehensive look at you from a long distance. Stand apart from other public for they may distract the full attention you may get while you are alone. Don’t make the blunder of signalling heavy vehicles like trucks when they have no way of naturally slowing down. They will not stop; however, you may take your chances with light vehicles although it is not advisable. Never try to hitchhike while simultaneously walking. It gives an impression that you can reach where you want to by mere walking. The greatest chance you have of being hitchhiked in India is by a policeman. Policemen are generally not afraid of being played foul as most of the other drivers are. The other reason stands as—they themselves are greatest of all hitchhikers. Obviously they reciprocate when they are awarded.

Half of your chances rest on the way you present your face and the way you signal your intent. You should not show too much eagerness although you do harbour it clandestinely. Neither you should be completely loose. Be as natural as you can, communicating silently to the driver that he is not the only one in the world who would stop for you, nor it is that you are gesturing at him for the sake of gesturing. Try not to avoid his questioning glance when he turns to you to inquire silently. You answer silently. The more time he gets to judge, the more chance you have. Don’t let your arm droop unless he goes past you. Never let your shout of destination serve as a tool to stop the driver while he is still driving. It will definitely kill 90 % of your chance even though he is heading for the same destination. If you are carrying a school bag, it is an advantage although a school bag appearing more like luggage is disheartening.

I have often seen many practicing this art alongside me. I would say not all were committed to a particular mistake but yes a significant number of them were. They would get in position as I have previously described, like stand facing the driver directly opposite, but due to some sort of torture by their conscience, a lingering guilt or shame of unknown origin, they would raise their left arm reluctantly and gradually as if they had been trying to do something else but by mere chance they would not be unhappy if someone stops by and offer them a free travel. This is catastrophic for a hitchhiker, but not serious. Another mistake which is serious but not catastrophic arises when you have several candidates competing in the vicinity. They all stand in a group thereby making it ambiguous who is the deserving one. An orderly air to the ambiguity can be provided by maintaining a necessary distance—of about 10m—between each of them, linearly.

Like all trades, this one too has its own unwritten ethics. You will never mislead the pilot in order to gain leverage of an extra mile thereby making him drive away from his usual path. Always try to help your friends, who are still tyros, by offering them fruits of your bait or by overloading so that your skill is recognized as a social one. Well, you are already working for a social benefit by increasing the efficiency of an otherwise inefficient ride.                  

Origin of…

It was with some unproductive, monotonous and a work which I can attribute, safely, not my own that kept me away from writing a full whole month. I must add that the physical demands of this work besides the scorching heat of North India only added to sap more energy and left little to be used elsewhere. However, with this burden now off my shoulders, I can, once again, write a little to pass my useless time which otherwise would have been dedicated to sound sleep.

I chose the title “Origin of…” so as to deal with the origin or more precisely source of a number of things which obviously, in our society, are attributed a mysterious origin—which cannot be comprehended or explained and hence should be left over as sprouting from God. I shall, for the sake of my own easiness, take these “mysterious things”—for they are no doubt mysterious—one by one and without any predisposition about the order in which to arrange them. So let’s start with one of the most elated and hyped claim of religion that morality, compassion, love exclusively belong to their literatures and in the absence of those literary works mankind would not have been able to love, to feel compassionately and to distinguish between good and evil.

I could not help finding it extremely ludicrous that human moral values have origin in a book. This claim is shattered to pieces as soon as one gives away one’s narcissist approach towards morality and gaze at it with due considerateness to all of nature including the most ferocious bestiality. We can observe, not with much difficulty, that love and compassion, in their most crude form, originates in the ability to distinguish i.e. to recognize likeness, similarity of features; first and foremost physical features. Here, I am not concerned with the trivial thought of physical attraction of an individual towards another but with ability of an individual to know his own features (physical) i.e. his body structure, ways of responding to changes in surrounding, his needs in terms of food, shelter etc. You see, that is the real source of liking, real source of morality, real source of love and not to forget compassion—the ability to relate. One may be left alone, right from the birth, to grow accustomed to his own self and not to any other, not even creatures of his own type leave aside any other species yet he will first approach one like him. The awareness about his own body structure through his senses, the ability to recognize other’s—also through his senses, gives rise to something called similarity. This, indeed, is the crudest love, compassion—a likeness of what is similar to us. And this crude love is spread across all animals, not just intelligent humans. That is the reason why they—that is the animals—don’t need literature to love. They have the ability, through their senses and nothing else, to recognize what is similar. Everything similar gains love and compassion, everything different is part of suspicion. Good is what is same, evil is that which is different. Morality of even good and evil builds on the base of similarity. It is this written morality of which religions are so proud of: a morality which is descendant of crude form. You see, justice too have some traces of this type of morality. It is heinous to kill a human being while other life forms are slaughtered without attracting least of punishment through our judicial systems even though they continue to be a subject of our scientific knives and taste bud.  I am not criticizing animal killing but making my point about origin of morality. This original compassion for something similar now transcends and evolves into love, good. It is the base of all subsequent definitions of morality no matter which culture develops it. However, a search for similarity leads to a lot of weed growth. For example racism is a weed growth in which apart from humanity one finds similarity in trivial things. Social Darwinism, however, can never work for the sole reason that humans have got a good memory. Religion itself is a weed growth—a special likeness for people of same religion, their cultures, dress, food, etc. and if not hatred then aversion to folks of different religion, their culture, dress, etc. A sense of superiority is raised in such situations. Caste system in India is another such weed growth. Misogynism is a weed growth of this crude morality. Patriots are raised and traitors are killed under a more subtle weed growth. Thus we see we have left the original morality and accepted side productions as the original. And there is no shortage of men who claim that side productions belong exclusively to them. In fact, they even go to the extent of laying their hands on the original morality.

Love, even in its subtlest form, is not immune to this original creed for likeness and similarity. Although most of love blossoms from a search of desired qualities—a certain form of finding similarity, difference in a pair is also a deliberate attempt at accepting the difference itself as something given to likeness. It can go without saying that hatred will rise wherever there is no likeness or one is unable to find such likeness or similarity. Revenge and malice are born of good memory. Humans have that in particular. In those who have a strong element for forgetfulness, revenge is in traces.  Absence of active memory can even end such malice as is the case with many animals.

We move now to the origin of truth and lie. As is believed commonly, truth and lie are something eternal; eternal truth—more correctly—and lie is just a lie. However, least to my concern whether lie is eternal or not, truth and lie are something not eternal. They are side products of intent to communicate. The complexity of the concept of truth and lie is build in the proportion the means of communication grows. When you can represent things separate from actions, of which till know only humans are capable, there you see truth and lie and the intent to deceive. Man seems to be marred by the weed growth of his own inventions, here in this case a complex structure of language.

I have already grown weary not because I have written too much for this one article but with lack of sleep. So in an attempt to wind up, I endeavour one more topic—that of poverty. There are endless attempts at conquering poverty but none to know what made it first or what propagates it from generation to other generation.  The answer to propagation of poverty is simple—inheritance.  Inheritance not just in the sense of material property but inheritance of all those shortages, inheritance of daily grief to which the child grows slowly accustomed to and gives up his hope in despair, inheritance of the knowledge that he may have to sleep empty stomach, inheritance of looking daily at deep sunken faces around him weakened with constant hunger and finally accepting the fate as it is, inheritance of dealing with crisis on a daily basis rather than occasionally as their so called benefactors do. An awful lot of inheritance! What makes me more critical of religion or imaginary God is not the imagination of it but the laws it involuntarily gave to the society. Just like the law of inheritance! Now what made poverty? As I have always held in my earlier posts that fate is not the origin of poverty. Origin of poverty lies in the powerful: to snatch what he felt like; and weak to let go what he cannot defend. Then after, the lazy powerful man made laws of what is right and what is not. What is lawful and what is not!  What should remain with him that he has snatched and what should be returned! This is where laws of inheritance originate—to keep for progeny what was earned with power and now only to replace power with labour; it should be noticed that this nepotism is also a weed growth of likeness to something similar, something which is close to us. Since laws are never made to the purpose which they currently serve, people often forget the origin and accept the current usage as the genuine one. They originate, they evolve, their purpose change from time to time.

Now the concluding lines…

More harm has been done than benefit by thrusting the “benefit for all” tag. People need to think for their good only and not meddle with the whole of humanity. Every man is capable of doing good to himself and to others for man is not naturally evil, on the contrary, man is naturally loving.                 

So far so good...

Heard about the guy who fell off a skyscraper? On his way down past each floor, he kept saying to reassure himself: So far so good…so far so good…so far so good. How you fall doesn’t matter. It’s how you land!

These lines from ‘La Haine’ pretty accurately describe the scenario of environmental disaster where man in his denial keeps asserting—so far so good…so far so good. The fall is pleasurable but for how long? How far? Where will he land? These are not bothering his conscience right now. Every now and then he needs some anaesthetic –in every epoch he needs new anaesthetic—to keep him distracted and distanced from the senselessness of his existence. He invented religion to keep himself busy with some meaningfulness and now his religion is consumption; a consumer of his own life as if he had to earn his own life back from mortgagee. I can hardly find a difference between those blatant priests of ancient religions who determined patterns of human life and the “corporate priests” of our time. They both produce a tamed, predictable, harmless, bootless and believing individual; ready to believe anything for the greater good, for magnificent future, for phantasmagoria of unimaginable, in fact a subject of ludicrousness. A little unbiased view can tell you what horrendous individuals these corporations produce although there is no decline in the amount of collective bovine pride that is boasted off.

By the time we begin to comprehend our environment, our existence and our objective, we are already entangled in the chains of consumerism. We are neck-deep in its water and it becomes our governing instinct in every endeavour. Each solution to a subtle problem is a new product, new base of consumers and new set of producers. This is the reason we see passive solutions to environmental crisis. Consumerism as a solution to consumerism! New consumerism to old consumerism! Use efficient light bulbs, plant a few trees—especially to break some record, recycle your paper, switch off lights for one hour on Earth’s day, recycle some more paper and fix your tap if it is leaking as if those were the causes of the climatic catastrophe. By all these “potent” methods of conservation, we can actually defeat the monster. The rape of nature is compensated by arranging a marriage: marriage to the raper. These useless methods will lead us nowhere but in the labyrinth of “so far so good”. What we need is a radical change of thought of how we evaluate our position with respect to our surroundings.

Two main reasons, as I see it, of why environmental crisis has reached a stage as dangerous as of now are wage slavery and private property. I would caution not to misinterpret private property with personal property. Every man and woman has the right to enjoy whatever he/she earns of his labour, i.e. personal property. And it is no better than stealing to reap where someone else has sowed i.e. private property. Private property is a product of social labour which, due to the laws of ownership, assigns products of labour to the one who owns means of production. Personal property is something you produce by your own labour. Now back to our discussion. The reason why we are facing such difficulties in handling of Nature is the borrowing of concept of ownership while transiting from Feudal ages to Capitalism. You see, when we bring individual ownership of lands, machines or any other means of production by the pretext of inheritance or capital, we are actually making the sense of having more privileged than any other intellectual sense. Now the one who owns has greater power in terms of laws than the one who really produces. Having sense master over all other senses!  It is this sense which led to the slavery by feudal lords and it is the same sense, with a little modification and a human face, which leads to wage slavery. To make this game seem fair, even a wage slave can climb up the ladders of slavery and become the one who can have wage slaves himself. This seems as something providing equality. You can be a wage slave today and you can have yourself many some other day contrary to those times where once a slave, always a slave. It makes people to compete to be either one who serves or the one who make others serve. In the process, few names change—sometimes swapping occurs and it is life.

Now one may ask what has wage slavery has to do with environmental crisis? It has to do a lot although we cannot suspect it because our stomach depends on it. And why our stomach is slave to wage? Because ownership of resources is decided by inheritance or capital and not by those who work on it. In fact we have developed quite sophisticated means of credit-debt system so that even if one is not benefitted by the fortunes of his predecessors, he can use the system to step up another web of wage slavery to amass huge wealth and then continue the pattern which has been followed since, seemingly, eternity. Who will suspect it as we are doing such a noble deed of providing jobs? Jobs for what? Jobs to consume and continue the worthless cycle of mindless consumption! Jobs to outrage the modesty of nature every single time we discover useless luxury to entertain ourselves with. It is not that I oppose materialistic view of life. It is not that I support an ascetic lifestyle of some sage in India who would go hungry to please God. It is not that I practise self-denial, self-destruction, perishing for some imaginary cause: I am no priest, I am no sage but one should do labour for what he wants. If you feel that your desire cannot be satisfied with what you have and it is too hard for you to take tough morsels of life as they come to you then go and work with your own bare hands for the item of luxury which fascinates you. Why do billions of people need to work as wage slaves for your fantasy, for your luxury? Why do billions of people need to think the way corporations, advertisements want them to think? That’s where the problem lays—Bovine mentality of people, herd instinct, millions mind thinking alike just like religion wanted them to. I am sure that atheism too is heading towards same bovine instinct. It will be disastrous if that happens. Man loses his contemplating power in herd and acquires the mind and idea of crowd. You see, if I make an item of luxury by my own hands, I have the full right to enjoy it and it produces no problem. Problem starts when people are dragged into the arena of mass production through wage slavery. It is not hard to imagine what deep dent billions of similar demands controlled through mass media produce on the face of Earth. Why same demands? Due to conditioning of human mind to consume, because of wage slavery to meet that false induced desire, because wage slaves working unaware of the catastrophe their slavery will warrant, because a tag of I own it. Why I own it? My parents left it for me, because I have capital from my wage slavery to buy the work of another wage slave whose wage is discriminated as his labour is physical and inferior compared to my intellectual labour and because I can measure that his labour requires less tiring of muscles and nerves than my own. Perhaps laughable assumptions and conclusions of history!

All these can be dealt with recycle of paper and turning off lights! People trained to consume without reason would obviously say so. People who value ”sense of having” more than the “sense of labour” would obviously say so. Biological inheritance transformed into property inheritance. All these laws framed, no matter they may seem trivial, by religious texts. Without the tag of ownership, one cannot have wage slavery. Without wage slavery there cannot be such ruthless exploitation of nature. In the name of fighting climatic battle we are plunged into another cyclone of consumption and this time with no guilt. In the words of Slavoj Žižek:

“This readiness to assume the guilt for the threats to our environment is deceptively reassuring: We like to be guilty since, if we are guilty, it all depends on us. We pull the strings of the catastrophe, so we can also save ourselves simply by changing our lives. What is really hard for us (at least in the West) to accept is that we are reduced to the role of a passive observer who sits and watches what our fate will be. To avoid this impotence, we engage in frantic, obsessive activities. We recycle old paper, we buy organic food, we install long-lasting light bulbs—whatever—just so we can be sure that we are doing something. We make our individual contribution like the soccer fan who supports his team in front of a TV screen at home, shouting and jumping from his seat, in the belief that this will somehow influence the game's outcome.”